ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a single case from a project called “The cultural memory of English teaching” which was conceived as an intergenerational dialogic inquiry into the professional biographies and practice histories of late career and retired English teachers working in the state of Victoria, Australia, from the 1970s onwards. It explores the “official stories” of teacher professional learning in Australia, and discusses the implications of these representations of teacher professionalism. The chapter offers an analysis of how the technical-instrumental construction of teacher professional learning represses questions of practice histories, engaging in a form of historical amnesia or official forgetting. Florence portrayed a professional life in which engagement in teaching and learning was supported by a continuous engagement with the theoretical, practical and socio-political debates shaping English teaching. The theme of intellectual engagement and the socially situated character of that engagement shapes Florence’s narrative and informs her sense of what worthwhile teacher professional learning entails.
